Subscribe
Subscribe via Social
3 Steps to Superior Performance
I had a very interesting conversation with a CEO attendee at one of my speeches. He’s built an impressive organization and he was sharing his management philosophy.
Basically, he believes that his most important job is to hire great people, which he defines as people clearly capable of doing the job assigned to them. His second most important job is to clearly lay out the results he expects. His third (and probably toughest) is to get out of the way and let his people go to work.
I realize that there is nothing earth shattering in this philosophy. What struck me is how matter of fact he was in discussing it, and the track record he had implementing it.
I often talk about how effective communication is not communicating so you can be understood, it’s communicating so you can’t be misunderstood. In my conversation with this CEO, I realized just how important this type of communication is, in a world that moves and changes so fast.
I’ve done a great job of assembling a unique group of people and talent at Imagine. My job now is to raise the bar on my communication so that I can get out of their way.
What do you have to do to drive better performance from your people?
Comments
3 Responses to “3 Steps to Superior Performance”
Leave a Reply
-
Resources
Doug's Washington Business Journal Columns- Intelligent Growth Articles
Third Wave Selling Blog
Products to Grow
Knowing when and how to get out of the way is critial to leadership (and hard to do when you’re passionate about the work). Do it too soon, and you leave people floundering; do it too late, and you de-motivate your best people.
For more on this, I highly recommend Paul Hershey’s seminal book on Situational Leadership. It talks about the 4 styles of leadership–telling, selling, coaching, delegating–and when each style is appropriate.
Donald, I had forgotten about that book – thanks for reminding me. I highly recommend it as well.
Doug
I follow the Hire the best, Detail (both yours and theirs) Objectives and then get the heck out of the way philosophy to the letter. From my perspective Step one and the process you use is critical ( I use a multi interview and evaluation process with many peers and front line people providing appraisals on candidates). Step two is a discussion and consistent review process of ‘ Where Are We At ‘ on our business objectives and ‘Have your personal objectives changed any? ‘ approach. And Step Three is pretty much just keep raising the bar until they say “ouch” and determining where “ouch” is for each person. If you don’t get an ouch or you get too many then you need to take a close look at your objectives again.